- In this video we're talking about
how you hide jump cuts.
Because on YouTube there's a trend
to just cut every few seconds, cut out all
the blank spaces and the um's, ooh's, and ah's,
and the ooh ooh ooh ooh, and just move the video forward.
Because when you move the video forward
you keep the audience engaged.
But there is a big chunk of the audience
that really does not like watching jump cuts.
And sometimes it just feels better
when you create and edit that's seamless
from beginning to end.
So in this video I'm going through
a few different methods that I use
to create seamless edits so that
I can hide all those little pesky jump cuts.
All right guys, let's get into it.
(upbeat music)
In this video what we're talking about is jump cuts.
So when you're shooting your videos,
if you're not super, like, good on camera,
you sometimes take breaks, or you say uh, ooh, uh,
or, you know, there's other things that come up.
And instead of leaving that in your edit
you just cut out that little section
and it moves the video along faster.
And this is important just for YouTube in general,
audiences on YouTube want content delivered fast.
They don't wanna sit there and wait.
Now obviously there's certain types of content
that are longer, more drawn out.
But when it comes to, like, talking bits,
like this style of content,
where you're just delivering information,
people don't wanna wait around for you
to think through your thoughts and then deliver it.
So if your video is 15 minutes,
but once you cut out all those spaces
in between and um's and ooh's and all that,
your video's gonna end up
being something like eight minutes.
On my videos I'm not seamless from beginning to end,
I have sections that I do at a time.
Sometimes I'll do a section that ends up
being a little bit longer, but you know,
there's a lot of times where I'm making multiple cuts.
So I've come up with a whole list of tactics
that I use if I wanna hide jump cuts.
And sometimes you might just leave a jump cut in.
I don't think that jump cuts are bad.
However, if it's like jump cut, jump cut,
jump cut, jump cut, jump cut,
That's when audiences really start seeing your edit
and depending on who your audience is,
it might become really distracting
and people will unsubscribe and leave your channel.
So using some of these tricks and these ways
to seamlessly transition from one shot to another
will help keep your audience engaged
while also not distracting your audience
because you're using a lot of jump cuts.
So number one is setting yourself up for success
and just being able to like go on a rant,
just being able to deliver the entire speech
without having those breaks and those mmh's and those ahh's,
and, you know, thinking through it.
Now this is comes from knowledge and experience.
So if you're someone who does a lot of public speaking,
or if you are someone who is good on camera,
you might be able to go from beginning to end
and just (snapping fingers) knock it out.
A lot of times what you have to do
is come up with everything that you wanna talk about,
really think through your structure, your outline,
and then have something that you can follow,
whether it's in your head or just right next to you.
But depending on your delivery style,
you might be able to get away with
just putting the camera, hitting record,
and just going for it.
I've seen some channels are pretty impressive
where they go for 10 minutes straight
without taking a break.
And there's nothing wrong with that,
that's actually super engaging if you can pull it off.
Me personally, I can't go for that long
and keep my thoughts straight.
So I'm gonna use one of the other five tactics
that I have for you here.
And the second one is using a teleprompter.
So a teleprompter's a great way
to get everything out without taking a ton of breaks.
Teleprompter is just a device that you put
on front of your lens and use your iPad or your phone
and basically you write out your entire script
and then it plays back on this mirror
that goes in front of the lens.
Now your lens can't see the teleprompter at all.
You're basically shooting through
this one way mirror system and when
you're looking at the lens, you're basically seeing
the text roll by.
So you could sit here and just read line, line, line.
And when you're looking at the teleprompter,
you're actually looking into the lens
so it makes it more engaging.
'Cause obviously on YouTube you wanna make sure
that you're engaging with your audience.
You don't wanna be looking over here at a script.
You would rather be looking right at the lens.
So a teleprompter's a great way
to just make sure that you're concise,
make sure that you're getting all the information out,
make sure that you're getting the video out
how you want to get it out,
while still being able to deliver without a lot of breaks.
Now I've found that teleprompters for me
make my conversation more robotic.
I'm much more of the creator who builds an outline,
comes up with talking points and then just goes for it.
Because when I deliver it comes out more organic.
Now because of that, I have to use different tricks
to hide cuts because I go back every few,
because I go back ever, because I go back once in a while
to reset what I said and say it in a different way.
So I'm kind of creating my script
as I go and I use an outline.
So my third tactic to hide jump cuts is to use B roll.
And you saw it just now with this teleprompter section,
I hid a bunch of my jump cuts by using B roll
of teleprompters to show you what I'm talking about.
So B roll's a great method to hide jump cuts
'cause you just put it over the edit.
And basically what happens is you're cutting away
from the shot, you're showing something
that ties into what it is that you're talking about,
and then you cut back to you and right there
you've hidden a cut so it seems like
the conversation is fluid.
However, you're just using B roll
to hide that section that you cut out.
The fourth method, and you've seen this
as we've been shooting this video,
which is punching in and out.
So this is a tactic that I use all the time
because it's a easy way to do a jump cut,
but make it feel seamless.
So when you punch in, it actually looks
like you're using another camera.
It could be two cameras stacked on top of each other,
but it's just a different shot.
So it's not the same shot back to back.
So it feels more seamless because
it looks like multiple cameras.
And that brings me to my next transition technique,
which is actually using multiple cameras.
Now I've been using this more and more
and, you know, sometimes it works
and sometimes it might be a little too much,
but what you can do is have different cameras set up.
You know, when you're shooting like documentary projects
or you're doing any sort of interview,
you wanna always have at least two cameras on your subject,
one front and potentially one off to the side.
Now on YouTube it's a little bit different
because you never really wanna get that side shot.
You know, when you're doing an interview,
it might make more sense because typically
when you're shooting like documentary projects,
you're not looking right at the lens.
The interviewee is looking a little bit
off the lens to the interviewer.
So it's a little bit different methodology
when it comes to YouTube,
but you can do kind of the newscast style
where you have one camera and then you turn
to another camera.
And I've done this in a few videos, as you could see here,
where I had multiple cameras, one on a slider,
one on a jib, and then one dead center.
This for me was a super easy way to create videos
because I would just have an outline
and then every time I need to transition
or I get caught up in some way, I just switch cameras.
And so it makes it super seamless
because I cut on the turn.
And when you cut on the turn, it feels seamless.
Even if you stop between you just repeat
that turn motion to the next camera,
you cut right on the action of you moving
and boom it feels like that you're just turning
your head and looking at a different camera.
Creates a super seamless transition.
And it looks like you're doing everything in just one take.
Now the sixth tactic that you can use
to create seamless transitions is graphics.
And you see this right here.
Every time that I go to a new transition,
I've put a graphic up.
Every time I talk about something specific,
I put something boom on screen,
and those are all hiding cuts.
So it's just like B roll , you're putting
something on screen that takes over the screen,
takes me off the screen, I can make my cut,
and then I come back and it looks like it's seamless
and it sounds like it's seamless.
Now one thing you gotta think about,
when you're doing jump cuts,
you really have to focus on audio
because if your audio doesn't match up
or there's some sort of weird little blip
like a in between the two shots,
it's gonna feel like you made a cut.
So you have to really think about
how you transition the audio.
So there's a few methods that you can use.
One is obviously just make a hard cut.
And if the audio's clean, then you know,
you might not hear any sort of, like, transition moment.
But another tactic that I use, is I fade out of
the previous shot and fade into the next shot,
and I overlapped them just a little bit on the timeline.
And this happens all the time when I'm transitioning
from one take to another because what I'll do is sometimes
I'll cut in the middle of a sentence.
Maybe I wanna cut off half of what I said previously
and cut right into the next sentence.
And what I'll do is just find where I end a word,
fade it down, then I have to play with
that fade so it sounds seamless,
and then fade into the next one.
And you wanna make sure that it sounds like it's continuous.
That's key when it comes to audio editing.
If you have this like fade down
and then it fades back up, people will hear that cut.
And it's one of those things when it comes
to creating videos in general,
people are more in tune with audio
because the audio experience is so important.
They might not necessarily know exactly
what they're hearing, but if there is some sort of blip
or there is some faded transition,
they're gonna be like, oh they transitioned shots,
even if you have B roll or graphics on screen.
And so you really wanna focus on making sure
that the audio is seamless because then whatever you do
with the visuals will make it feel like
it's just a continuous take from beginning to end.
And the conversation will continue from beginning to end.
One last thing I wanna leave you on
is that you wanna use all of these different tactics.
So don't just focus on B roll
or don't just focus on graphics.
Use a mixture of graphics, B roll, multi-cams,
try to outline different sections
where you can do just like a straight talk
for a minute or two minutes.
Maybe try a teleprompter.
You gotta really find what works best for you
and how you can create a flow of your video
so that your videos feel seamless.
Because if you can keep the audience engaged
and keep them on your video, well then
your video's gonna get more audience retention,
watch time, all the things that tells YouTube
that, you know, YouTube should be sending
this video out to more people,
which gets you more views, subscribers,
watch, you know, like all that.
So next I highly suggest you check out
this video right here.
It's all about a method on how you can edit faster
by doing this one little tweak
before you actually start editing.
All right, guys, I'll see over there.